Robert H. Sitkoff

John L. Gray Professor of Law

Biography

An expert in wills, trusts, estates, and fiduciary administration, Robert H. Sitkoff is the John L. Gray Professor of Law at Harvard University. The youngest professor with tenure to receive a chair in the history of Harvard Law School, Sitkoff previously taught at New York University School of Law and at Northwestern University School of Law.

Sitkoff’s research focuses on economic and empirical analysis of trusts, estates, and fiduciary administration. His work has been published in leading scholarly journals such as the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, and the Journal of Law and Economics. Sitkoff is the surviving co-author of Wills, Trusts, and Estates (Aspen 9th ed. 2013), the leading American coursebook on trusts and estates.

Sitkoff is an active participant in trusts and estates law reform. He serves under Massachusetts gubernatorial appointment on the Uniform Law Commission (ULC). Within the ULC, he is a liaison member of the Joint Editorial Board for Uniform Trusts and Estates Acts, the principal oversight body for all uniform law activity pertaining to trusts and estates, and has been a member of several drafting committees for acts involving trusts and estates matters. He is currently serving as Chair of the Drafting Committee on divided trusteeship. Within the American Law Institute, Sitkoff is a member of the Council, the Institute’s Board of Directors, and he is a member of the Council’s Program Committee. He previously served on the consultative groups for the Restatement (Third) of Trusts and the Restatement (Third) of Property: Wills and Other Donative Transfers.

Sitkoff serves as an advisory consultant and expert witness in litigation and regulatory matters involving wills, trusts, estates, and fiduciary administration. In 2007, he was named an up-and-coming young lawyer by Lawyer’s Weekly USA. Sitkoff’s research has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Financial Times, and other leading media outlets. Sitkoff is the editor of the Wills, Trusts, and Estates abstracting journal in the Social Science Research Network, is a past chair of the Section on Trusts and Estates of the Association of American Law Schools, and is an academic fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel.

Prior to joining the legal academy, Sitkoff was a law clerk to then Chief Judge Richard A. Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. At the University of Chicago Law School, from which he graduated with High Honors, Sitkoff was the Managing Editor of the Law Review, was selected for the Order of the Coif, and was awarded the Olin Prize as the outstanding graduate of his class in law and economics.